Maths

Our vision for Maths in St. Michael’s sees all children having a positive attitude towards Maths and recognising its purpose and value to their future.  Children will be confident calculators, determined problem solvers and skilled in the language of Maths. To achieve this goal it will be necessary for standards to continue to be raised as we expertly identify and fill learning gaps from prior learning when pupils arrive with us so that the Maths curriculum can be taught at the correct pace through the rest of the school. 

Maths builds ASPIRATION by:

Helping children recognise that they need to be in control of the quality of their work in Maths. Knowing that only through making mistakes in solving mathematical problems, they will learn new skills and that mistakes are an extremely important part of learning. They move beyond writing answers and waiting to be told if they are ‘right or wrong’ and on to find ways of checking their answers - using mathematical reasoning and language to analyse misconceptions to eliminate mistakes and progress in learning new skills.

Maths builds BELIEF by:

Providing children with problem-solving opportunities (through CPA approach) that will grow their belief that they can find a way forward in many different challenging contexts. As they will have experienced many occasions where they are presented with problems in Maths - which, at first, they are unable to find a way to a solution, they will understand that by trying a variety of methods and using the previous attempts to inform the next attempt, they can solve what may, at first, have seemed impossible.

Maths builds CREATIVITY by:

Setting complex tasks that require the child to try a multitude of approaches - determining the most effective - before finding a solution. Equipping them with a variety of pathways to solve problems, they discover that fluency is an important part of creativity and going through the cycle of ‘attempts - review - refine’, will help them move towards success. This supports the children to move on from their concept of Maths when they arrive at the school which is more ‘look at the question, think about it, discuss it and calculate it and write down the answer’.

St Michael’s is a Church of England school that believes that supporting children’s development of character and values, including the core British values of democracy, mutual respect, liberty and the rule of law, is an essential part of equipping young people to thrive as citizens in the world of the future. Maths actively supports this by:

• Recognising individual liberty through encouraging and celebrating problem-solving;

• A respect for the order and the beauty of numbers and patterns that are woven through maths 

• Celebrating mistakes and respecting differences in our approaches to learning

• Celebrating academic success as a key to equipping pupils to play a full role in the world of the future

If you are working well in this subject these are the skills you are learning:

• Problem-solving

• Pattern finding

• Accurate calculating

• Analysing skills to help identify the most efficient way to solve a problem or calculate

• Determination – to see problems through (especially in ‘find all possibility’ problems)

• Organisation – especially in puzzle solving but also in more complex calculating.

Good attainment in Maths is a pre-requisite to almost all further education so as a subject it opens the door to all careers that require academic achievement

If you like this subject then these are some of the jobs you can go on to:

• Software Developer and Computer Programmer

• Research scientist

• Economist

• Actuary

• Engineer

• Accountant

• Statistician

• Almost anything that involves money